‘I moved you in here because we have to talk,’ he breathed harshly.

‘No…I don’t know what to say to you-’

Christien swung round. The lines of strain grooved between his nose and mouth were matched by the brooding darkness of his gaze. ‘I should have asked you just to listen. I’ll do the talking.’

Tabby looped a straying strand of hair off her brow in an effort to hide that she was still reeling from the way events had overtaken them the night before.

‘That day four years back, when you tried to see me at the villa and Veronique spoke to you instead, I was probably drunk. After I’d dealt with the formalities of my father’s death and my mother shut herself away here demanding to be left alone, I spent the rest of that hideous week drunk.’

Green eyes huge, Tabby gaped at him because he had told her something she would never have suspected for herself, for he always seemed so much in control. ‘Perhaps I should’ve thought of that. Naturally you were having trouble coping-’

Christien dug lean hands into the pockets of his well-cut trousers. ‘It was getting by without you I was struggling to handle,’ he ground out in a driven undertone.

The silence stretched and stretched.

‘Zut alors…I was planning to marry you and then I saw you with the biker and it all went pear-shaped on me. When our fathers died in that car accident, I wanted you,’ he bit out. ‘But pride wouldn’t let me have you, so I drank myself into a stupor to ensure I didn’t weaken.’

Tabby blinked. She was transfixed. He had been planning to marry her?

Christien shrugged a broad shoulder with something less than his usual grace. ‘I didn’t like feeling like that. I watched my mother sink into despair without my father. They had always been very close and for a while after his death she did not want to live without him. It was terrifying to watch. I decided I didn’t want to feel like that about any woman ever.’

‘I can understand that…’ Tabby mumbled, and yet she could offer nothing to match his unhappy experience.

Her stepmother had had shallow affections. Aside of a few noisy crying jags, the discovery that she was not as prosperous a widow as she had hoped had infuriated Lisa and ensured that her grief had been even more short-lived.

‘Were you serious when you said you were planning to marry me then?’ Tabby prompted hesitantly. ‘I mean, you were furious with me for lying about my age. How could you have been thinking about marrying me?’

‘How not?’ Clear dark golden eyes met hers in fearless acknowledgement. ‘I still wanted you. In the end that’s all it came down to.’

Still wanted her but much against his will, she translated. But she was still deep in shock. While being very moody and unsentimental about it, Christien was nonetheless giving her riveting information about what he had felt for her in the past. He was so tense, though, that she felt a sudden shout might shatter him to pieces and she was touched.

Christien expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Once you lied to me about your age because you didn’t want to lose me. In the same way I chose to hold fire on telling you that I was engaged to Veronique on terms that you would never understand. Why? I didn’t want to lose you.’

‘Didn’t you?’ Her voice felt all strangled inside her throat.

‘That summer we were first together, I was in love with you. What else could it have been? That kind of madness that means you can’t bear to be apart for even a few hours?’ Christien rested shimmering golden eyes on her. ‘I wouldn’t admit it to myself but I had never felt for anyone what I felt for you-’

Her nose wrinkled and she made a frantic attempt to fight the tears threatening. ‘Oh Christien…’ she said thickly.

‘When Solange left you the cottage, I used it as an excuse to see you again in London. I had no need to make that a personal visit and I could have made more effort to discourage you from moving to Brittany-’

‘But I was so determined to make a new life here…I think that you weren’t the only one of us hiding from the truth-’

Christien spread graceful brown hands in an inconclusive motion. ‘Nothing went to plan then…but then I had no true strategy. Around you, I don’t think straight,’ he confessed with fierce reluctance. ‘I just needed to see you, be with you, make love to you, and that first time I did not even recall that Veronique was a part of my life!’

Tabby scrambled off the bed, crossed the carpet and closed her arms round him tight. She was satisfied for, to her way of thinking, he had not had a normal engagement with the other woman and she could not judge him for his lack of fidelity to a woman who had told him that he might do as he liked.

‘But I ended my engagement to Veronique immediately afterwards. I felt guilty but I didn’t hesitate,’ Christien confirmed.

‘Immediately afterwards?’ It was though yet another weight fell from Tabby’s troubled heart, for she needed to know that she could trust him.

‘I saw her in Paris and came back to Brittany that evening but you had already left the cottage. Unfortunately something foolish I said out of guilt to Veronique-that I was not thinking of marriage with you-very probably made her even angrier when she learned that I had in fact decided to marry you just as fast as I could.’ Christien volunteered with a grimace.

‘That’s right…at that point you were dreaming of refurbishing the cottage into a delightful residence for a convenient mistress…am I right?’

Beautiful dark golden eyes glinting with wariness, Christien finally nodded.

‘You see, I know you…I know how your mind works,’ Tabby warned him with newly learned assurance. ‘The idea of marrying me only came after you found out about Jake and when you realised I wasn’t up for the living-in arrangement-’

‘Can’t you tell when a guy’s ready to do anything to get you?’

‘Nope…I need it spelt out.’ Tabby was hardly breathing as she said it, for she was beginning to believe her wildest dreams had come true without her even appreciating it. It was the way he was looking at her.

Christien scooped her up and sat down on the edge of the bed with her cradled in his arms. ‘I love you, ma belle. I love you like crazy.’

Tabby heaved an ecstatic sigh. She had not even dared to hope and there he had been sneakily hiding his feelings from her. ‘You should have told me that ages ago-’

‘It took me a painfully long time to appreciate how I felt-’

Tabby gazed up at him with a dreamy smile. ‘I thought it was Jake…I thought you were only marrying me for him-’

‘No, he’s fantastic, but you are in a class all your own,’ Christien confided thickly. ‘I want to marry you to make you mine-’

‘What do you think I am…some trophy?’ Tabby teased.

‘My trophy.’ Framing her face with not quite steady hands, he tasted her lush mouth with a hungry fervour that threatened to blow her away.

Tabby quivered. ‘I love you so much,’ she finally told him.

‘You do?’ His charismatic smile flashed out and his beautiful eyes were tender on hers. ‘Even though I’ve screwed up on innumerable occasions?’

‘I like it when you screw up-’

‘You were supposed to tell me I don’t…feed my ego,’ Christien lamented.

‘Your ego is healthy enough-’

‘I’m mad for you,’ he breathed raggedly.

‘We’ll be married tomorrow-’

‘Tomorrow might as well be a hundred years away. I ache with wanting you-’

‘It’ll be a very exciting honeymoon,’ Tabby promised shamelessly, nestling close to provoke, really loving his desperation.

‘We could go for a drive, mon amour,’ Christien groaned. ‘Book into a hotel-’

‘No…your mother has me booked into a beauty salon for half of the day as it is-’

‘That’s stupid…you’re gorgeous just the way you are. Don’t let them cut your hair.’

Tabby glanced up to see Jake peering round the edge of the door at them.

‘Kissy stuff.’ Jake pulled a face. ‘It’s yucky!’

‘I think we should start as we mean to go on. Lock the door on him and let your nightie fall off again,’ Christien informed her huskily.

‘I’m worth waiting for,’ Tabby swore with a cheeky smile. She curved into the wonderful reassuring warmth and strength of his big, muscular body and, when Jake hurtled over to join them, gathered Jake in close as well. She was loved. She was loved by both of them, which just made her feel incredible.

Her wedding outfit was a two-piece composed of an embroidered and beaded fitted bodice the same rich green as her eyes and a flowing ivory skirt. An emerald and diamond tiara was anchored to her head, her diamond necklace was at her throat and her wedding present from her groom was the superb diamonds that hung from either ear.

Christien could not take his appreciative gaze from her. He led her up the steps and into the mairie for the civil ceremony as though she were a queen. The church blessing followed in the little chapel down the street. Holding hands, they posed for photographs afterwards, her eyes shining, his eyes resting on her with pride and a love he couldn’t hide.

The reception was held in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. Alison Davies and her boyfriend looked on in surprise as Tabby took all the luxury and the attention in her stride. Indeed, the bride’s bubbly personality and assurance were much admired and, in her radius, the groom was less cool than his reputation suggested. His less discreet relatives hinted that parental opposition had kept the young couple apart. Their guests began talking of the match as a ‘grande passion’. That Tabby was penniless and neither stick-thin nor a classic beauty had been noted. That Christien looked at his bride as though she were as irresistible as Cleopatra was also noted. That Tabby had succeeded where the much-disliked Veronique had failed was sufficient to ensure that she would become a great social success.